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Baylis, Smith and Owens: The Globalization of World Politics 7e Case Study: The European ‘refugee crisis’
IR Theory in Practice Case Study: The European ‘refugee crisis’1
Overview of the topic: The European ‘refugee crisis’
The movement of people has a long-standing history on the world’s continents.
Historically integral to trade, it is at the root of ever-changing social relations and thus
(global) politics. Indeed, it is difficult to point to a moment of origin. The category of
‘refugee’ on the other hand has a particularly modern connotation that stems from a
person’s status as ‘stateless’. Particularly prominent in times of warfare, one of the
first periods marked by large-scale ‘refugee’ movements in modern Europe is the
First World War. Here, Belgian, Serbian, Russian, and Armenian peoples were
among the largest ethnic groups to flee from war atrocities (Gatrell). Similarly, the
Second World War was marked by large population movements as a result of
evacuation, displacement, expulsion, and deportation policies conducted by military
forces by different participant states.
Recently, a ‘new wave’ of ‘refugees’ has hit Europe. The majority of origin countries
are Middle Eastern, North African, and Balkan states. While motivations differ among
those who set out on often dangerous paths to make their way to Europe, economic
reasons and intra-state conflict are among the most prominent. Particularly the latter 1 From here on forwards both the terms ‘refugee’ and ‘refugee crisis’ will be referred to in quotation marks.
The reason for doing so in relation to the former is to highlight that while ‘refugee’ remains an important political and juridical category (see Section 3.1 below) this is not the only or singular identity marker that the person behind this category carries, refuting the idea that ‘refugees’ can be thought of as a monolithic group or entity. The reason for placing the European ‘refugee crisis’ in quotation marks is twofold. On the one hand, the large-scale use of the term ‘crisis’ to describe the wave of people seeking asylum in Europe, did not begin until the summer of 2015. This, however, misconstrues its timeline. As such, this trend had in fact seen increased development even prior to 2015, but the EU ‘Dublin Accords’—temporarily suspended by the German government in 2015—meant that this dynamic had predominantly affected EU states on the Mediterranean coast, particularly Italy and Greece. Despite these countries’ call for EU-wide support at the very least since 2010, however, little political engagement had come from other EU member states. To call the current migration dynamic a ‘crisis’ only after it begins to affect particular (inter-continental) states thus misconstrues it as a sudden and urgent process and raises important questions as to whose agendas and political concerns ‘count’ at the EU-level. If the above is mostly concerned with a temporal misrepresentation of the current migration wave to Europe, a second concern is a spatial misconstruction. Thus, it is important to note that while our focus is Europe’s engagement with this dynamic, there is a far greater number of people who seek asylum elsewhere, particularly when their numbers are set against those who were citizens of these particular countries previously (see: http://popstats.unhcr.org/en/overview#_ga=2.184364963.48007316.1535214832-854853203.1535214832; http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html; http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/publications/migrationreport/docs/MigrationReport2017_Highlights.pdf). Examples include: Lebanon, Jordan, Chad, and Turkey. Finally, the word ‘crisis’ carries a negative implication that is often used in narratives that discourage the entry of people into EU member states. It should thus be stressed that the use of the term ‘refugee crisis’ in the following is not intended to play into such narratives and attempts to offer a nuanced analysis of the misrepresentations identified above. The continuous use of the term stems rather from little satisfactory alternatives. ‘Refugee wave’ too is often associated with a threatening dynamic, while ‘illegal immigration’ carries grave ethical concerns over the use of the word ‘illegal’ when describing the ontology of any human individual.
make unregistered entry into the country as difficult as possible, this stance towards
‘refugees’ in Europe was reinforced in early October 2016, when the Hungarian
president, Victor Orban, issued a national referendum to decide upon the admission
of ‘refugees’ into Hungarian territory. While the referendum was not admitted due to
low voter turn-out, this illustrates that European refugee politics are marked by an
ongoing friction between international institutional law on the one hand, and state
claims to sovereignty on the other.
This is clearly evident also from more recent developments in the EU, where debates
over EU-policies towards ‘refugees’ have, it has been argued, threatened the
institutions’ stability as a whole.
Indicative is the UK’s decision to leave the EU, where the so-called ‘leave campaign’
was largely premised on an anti-EU-migrant stance. Though the emphasis among
such arguments was indeed on ‘migrants’ from mostly Eastern EU states (for a
discussion on the use of terminology and semantics see the section on
‘Constructivism’ below), the political propaganda that underlined these arguments
was seemingly prepared to ignore the particular nuances of heritage and reason for
migration to the EU and UK in its public discussion of such arguments. Nigel
Farage’s ‘anti-immigrant poster’ (Morrison, 2016; Stone, 2016; Wright, 2016), which
largely depicted ‘refugees’ from the Middle East, while referencing economic and
employment instability among UK-citizens as a result of open EU-borders and
concomitant migration of non-UK EU-citizens, is only the most obvious fallacy in the
portrayal of this narrative.
The legal and semantic distinction between ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ and their centrality
for ethical and political policies towards people who seek to move to the EU, while in
itself an important discussion, is not primarily at issue here, however. Rather, the
above suggests that the European ‘refugee crisis’ has, at the very least in its
portrayal, posed a challenge to the EU with not insignificant consequences for the
liberal institutionalism upon which it is premised. The question thus becomes not
merely one of how liberal institutionalism deals with such events, but whether it is
able to sustain them in the face of counter-claims advocating for a return to more
exclusionary and unilateral state-sovereignty.
2) Neoliberal policies and migrant workers
As mentioned in the introductory section, one among many other current motivations for migration is economic instability and inequity. This has been particularly prominent since the 2008 global financial crisis and is closely linked to concomitant neo-liberal economic policies of austerity. The latter refers to a series of economic policies, which seek to reduce government budget deficits. Such policies may include spending cuts, tax increases, or both, and serve to demonstrate governments' fiscal discipline to credit rating agencies (such as Moody’s). The down-side to these policies is, as most macroeconomic models assess, that austerity means increased unemployment in both the public and private sector, as government spending falls. Simultaneously, tax increases reduce household disposable income.
Together, such measures are said to reduce private spending and consumption, which impacts the economy negatively.
In this sense, austerity is premised on a core principle of neoliberal economic policy: the reduction of state-intervention in the market economy. It is important to note that neoliberalism is not equal to notions of ‘anarcho-economics’. Nonetheless, it is premised on minimal state regulation of markets in line with a laissez-faire approach. This has resulted in much cutting of state spending on welfare expenditure over the past few years. In the UK, for example, heated debates have arisen over government spending on the NHS.
In the current European ‘refugee crisis’, migrants, particularly from the Western
Balkans (Kosovo, Albania, and Serbia) and parts of West Africa (The Gambia
and Nigeria), are likely to be ‘economic refugees’ or rather economic ‘migrants’.
Fleeing from poverty and unemployment, many make their way to Europe in the hope
to find employment there. However, their applications for asylum are ordinarily turned
down by European nations on the grounds that they have no valid claims to refugee
status.
Legally this is not an invalid argument, given the exclusion of economic reasons in
the UNHCR’s definition of the ‘refugee’ status. However, this raises important
questions not only about the sufficiency of international institutions and their ability to
sustain trans-national policies against national/ist urges to return to exclusionary
state-sovereign policies; it also brings to light the supposed distinction between
politics and economics. In this particular case, the different legal status within which
economic ‘refugees’ are consequently placed, means a facilitation in member states’
ability to turn these people back at their borders, and raises important questions as to
the humanitarian ethics that underlie both the UN and EU as liberal political rather
We have already seen how this plays out in the construction of the social category
‘refugee’ in Section 3.1 above, concluding that the attribution of this category is
crucial for determining what counts as a threat to livelihood, for whom and where,
and whose livelihood is in need of protection. This becomes ever more important
when turning to Foucault’s understanding of Biopower (Foucault, 1998: 133–160).
In simple terms, Foucault’s notion of biopower refers to the state’s ability to determine
the life and death of its citizens. Tracing this through the historical genealogy of
European politics, Foucault argues that biopower has been exercised in different
forms, moving through three main stages of power: juridical, disciplinary, and
biopower. All three coincide with significant philosophical, political, social, and
economic developments in European politics, particularly the structuring of states
from monarchical feudal societies to liberal-democratic capitalist societies. The
former, marked by juridical power, is fundamentally premised on the notion of state
sovereignty as the ability to ‘take life or let live’. Much in line with classical realist
understandings of power, the ensuring of the state’s wellbeing is conceived in terms
of the wellbeing of the monarch, whose power in turn is uttered through conquest (of
bodies). With the onset of capitalist societies, however, the assurance of the state’s
wellbeing shifts from a focus on the individual monarch and turns instead to the body
politic as a whole. This requires closer administrative control over state populations
and emerges with the development of (scientific) disciplines that enable the
integration of biological processes into political calculations. It is in the discipline that
knowledge about particular biological processes is produced, which are then
administered at a political level.
It is here that both the notion of borders and citizenship become integral to a modern
understanding and practice of biopower, which functions as an integral part of social
contract theory. Dating back to writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1968), this
is premised on the notion that individuals must yield certain prerogatives to the state
in order to become members of its polity as a whole. In a contradictory sense then
this means that the state’s promise to ensure the individual’s freedom (from harm) is
subject to the individual’s complete subjugation to the state. From this perspective,
the status of ‘refugees’ as ‘stateless’ poses an unresolvable categorical problem to
modern notions of politics: on the one hand, an international ethics purports that
‘refugees’ be protected; on the other hand, the institutional mechanism with which
this protection is administered and fulfilled (the state) is no longer—in the case of the
state of origin—or not yet—in the case of the host state—available. This, together
with the premise of social contract theory that individuals must be free (from external
constraints) when choosing to become a citizen of a state, means that the category of
the ‘refugee’ does not fit neatly within the structuring of modern state politics, and
indeed poses a ‘threat’ to the very basis of its logic; one that, as the increase in right-
wing nationalist narratives and policies show, some believe must be resisted at all
costs.
The point here is not to support such views. Rather, my hope is to convey that right-wing policies—at least in part—appear to emerge out of a perceived need to protect this modern world order. Understood in this sense, attachment to the preservation of
Baylis, Smith and Owens: The Globalization of World Politics 7e Case Study: The European ‘refugee crisis’
this order derives from its status as the underlying premise of identity in that it structures a view of the world with concomitant subject positions therein. Its loss may thus easily lead to a loss of sense of self (whether conscious or unconscious) and this is what ‘must be’ resisted. The fallacy or danger in such impressions is, of course, that it conceives of (national) identity in terms of a fixed and stagnant phenomenon that can not be altered; one that does not allow for a re-envisioning of a different world order with different subject positions and thus different and transforming notions of self and selves.
Baylis, Smith and Owens: The Globalization of World Politics 7e Case Study: The European ‘refugee crisis’
Similar reinterpretations of such politics of representation have also emerged from
other post/colonial regions. Among them is Homi Bhabha and his notion of
‘postcolonial stereotyping’ (see Box 5.1 below). Premised on the poststructuralist
strand of thought (see Ch. 11), Bhabha approaches his analysis of postcolonial
stereotyping through a critique of the discursive construction of ‘otherness’ in the
truth regime which surrounds the colonial discourse. In other words, his main
argument suggests that there is a ‘fixity’ in the ideological and cultural construction of
‘the other’ (in our case, ‘the refugee’) through which such subjects are always already
‘known’ (see also writings by such scholars as Edward Said on Orientalism and
Stuart Hall on Identity). This exerts power in the sense of establishing a truth-regime,
through which ‘refugees’ can be defined in generic terms and consequently
controlled in the process. In other words, Bhabha argues, this leads to a discursive
act of surveillance and control.
Box 5.1: Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture
Colonial discourse ‘turns on the recognition and disavowal of racial/cultural/historical differences. Its predominant strategic function is the creation of a space for a ‘subject peoples’ through the production of knowledges in terms of which surveillance is exercised … [It denotes] a form of governmentality that in marking out a ‘‘subject nation’’, appropriates, directs and dominates its various spheres of activity’.
Homi Bhabha (2004) The Location of Culture, New York, USA: Routledge Ltd., pp. 100 –101.
Important then is the question as to whom or what the particular representation and
construction of the figure of the ‘other’, in this case ‘The refugee’ really serves. This
matter is further complicated by the fact that discursive surveillance and control
through representative politics occurs both through benevolent ‘othering’ and through
harmful ‘othering’. It is not only those opposed to the admission of ‘refugees’ that
define the parameters of their identity. Even those advocating for the admission of
‘refugees’ and the ‘preservation’ of difference (otherness) rely on a categorical
parameter within which ‘the refugee’ is demarcated. Thus, both benevolent and
harmful narratives are privy to denying ‘the other’ to be other in his or her multiple
ways (Ahmed, 2000).
In this sense, we might argue that defining ‘refugees’ in the colonial discourse is an
example of the ways international relations remains premised on ‘imperial
encounters’. Coined by Roxanne L. Doty, this signifies an ‘asymmetrical encounter in
which one entity has been able to construct ‘‘realities’’ that were taken seriously and
acted upon [while] the other entity has been denied equal degrees or kinds of
agency’ (Doty, 1996). Indicative might, once again, be the discussion on the
distinction between ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ and the ways in which region and
therefore race demarcate the two. Beyond the ‘merely’ legal distinction then it
Baylis, Smith and Owens: The Globalization of World Politics 7e Case Study: The European ‘refugee crisis’
International Crisis Group, ‘What Is Driving the Global Refugee Crisis?’, 15
September 2016, available: https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/what-s-driving-global-
refugee-crisis.
UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency, ‘Refugees’, available: http://www.unhcr.org/refugees.html. UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency, USA, ‘The 1951 Refugee Convention’, available: http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/1951-refugee-convention.html.
UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency: ‘Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees’, available: https://cms.emergency.unhcr.org/documents/11982/55726/Convention+relating+to+the+Status+of+Refugees+%28signed+28+July+1951%2C+entered+into+force+22+April+1954%29+189+UNTS+150+and+Protocol+relating+to+the+Status+of+Refugees+%28signed+31+January+1967%2C+entered+into+force+4+October+1967%29+606+UNTS+267/0bf3248a-cfa8-4a60-864d-65cdfece1d47. UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency, ‘UNHCR viewpoint: ‘‘Refugee or ‘‘Migrant’’—